Lose Your First 50 Games As Quickly As Possible

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    Keywords: Proverb

Beginners lose -- that's just the way it is. I lost a lot when I was a novice, and I still lose a lot. Winning my first even game felt really good, but it didn't come until I had gotten stomped into mush by every opponent I came across.

Don't think of losing in terms of failure, especially when you're a novice. Think of it as a stepping stone to future victories. Don't delude yourself -- if you lose, you lose. But don't beat yourself up over it the way a lot of novices do. Seize the lessons in the loss and stay positive.

-- Scartol

Hu: When I think of this proverb, I also think of Thomas Edison's famous quip. An assistant asked, "Why are you wasting your time and money? We have had failure after failure, almost a thousand of them. Why do you continue to pursue this impossible task?" Edison said, "We haven't had a thousand failures, we've just discovered a thousand ways to not invent the electric light."

So it is with the first 50 (or pick your own number) games. One can learn dozens of simple mistakes to avoid, such as self-atari. Of course, one can also make those mistakes at high ranks, but getting them out of the way quickly is a good idea.


[Diagram]

What was he thinking?

mgoetze: It really bothers me when beginners think and think and think, just to come up with a really brilliant move of this category. I always end up thinking, he would have learned a lot more if he had played 3 fast games in the same amount of time. But it's always hard to get this point across to beginners without hurting their feelings.

emk: its not all about getting better... its about fun... so let ppl play like they want or they will lose interest imo

mgoetze: Uhm, it's not quite that simple. Nevermind that getting better is a lot of fun on it's own, it's also not very much fun for someone who already is somewhat better to play people who aren't getting better and taking a long time to play moves like this.

Fhayashi: With the advent of the internet and internet go servers, the proverb may have to be modified to "Lose your first 150 games as quickly as possible". I think losing 50 face-to-face games is probably more enlightening than losing 50 internet games, mainly because you're probably going to be losing 50 face-to-face games with someone significantly stronger than you.

Malweth: When someone with beginner skills thinks for a long time and makes a move like that, it could certainly be more beneficial than playing as fast as possible. If you think for a long time and make a decision resulting in bad outcome, you're more likely to remember that (and how) it failed then if you played purely on instincts.

Bignose: Beginners often underestimate the length of time it takes to play a game -- that's one of the things it takes (hopefully a relatively short) time to really learn.

This has the result that some beginners will consistently throw all their energy into the first thirty or fifty moves, and find themselves mentally exhausted before the middle game has really begun. When they realise this, the rest of the game seems like a grinding descent into what is sure to be a loss anyway.

IMO it's part of teaching to point this out, and encourage the beginner to play more games rather than extremely intense games, before it saps the beginner's will to play.


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This is a copy of the living page "Lose Your First 50 Games As Quickly As Possible" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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